In 1934 Malcolm Cowley published an autobiographical literary history, Exile's Return: A Narrative of Ideas, and established himself as an important writer. Three decades later in 1965 the editor of Literary Times would write, "Malcolm Cowley is, next to Edmund Wilson, the finest literary historian and critic . . . in America today."

While in the early 1930s Cowley's name was often associated with Communism and the political . . .